Feminists

It runs the spectrum from slow-growing, indolent to horribly swift, aggressively malignant. I'm in an ultra high risk group: Eastern European Jewish, early puberty, first child after thirty, mother, sister and maternal grandmother with the disease. Fortunately, the kind that runs in my family is the slow-growing variety. Both my mother and my grandmother survived it for over twenty years, and died of completely unrelated causes. My sister had it twenty years ago, and was diagnosed with it again last month in her other breast. The surgeon said both the tumor margins and her lymph nodes were clear, so she's probably good for another twenty years.

Then there's the kind Elizabeth Edwards, Molly Ivins and my friend Alexis had. The kind that kills you. Alexis was particularly unlucky. She had a normal mammogram in January, found a lump in June and was dead by Thanksgiving. At age 48.

So when people talk about breast cancer, I have to ask "What kind?" But if the MRI thing saves lives, then I'm all for it.

This is personal.